Australian Broker TV

Australian Broker TV brings you closer to the industry's
most influential leaders and thinkers. Click on the videos below to watch the interviews:

Technology and business strategy

Australian Broker speaks to AMAs 2013 winner Wayne Macartney of Loanworks Technologies who believes that brokers must focus on how technology can really help their business.

Video transcript below:

Wayne Macartney, Manager, Loanworks Technologies

Wayne Macartney: You can get out there and you can get lost in things that at the end of the day aren’t going to make a difference to your business. I think it’s really a challenge to look at technology, look at strategy and then make sure that you are lining up so that technology is actually driving your strategy.

I think that the most significant changes have probably already occurred. I think what we are seeing at the moment is, people getting to a level of technology where any benefits are incremental and it’s more about leveraging that technology and getting value from it. I think it’s no different than other software that you buy. You probably are out of the box, using that 5% or 20% or 10%, you know a small percentage of features set. It’s really about getting down into the next level of feature setting, getting the people on board so your whole organisation is leveraging it. One of the blockages we see quite often is you know perhaps some of these sales guys, you know how many sales myself you know, the last thing you want to do is, be tied to a piece of software. But rather than explore the feature set of the software that is in front of them, you know it’s a knee jerk reaction, so we need a basic kit that does blah and then there is a knee jerk kind of reaction to that. So I think getting software fully rolled out and fully embedded in and fully exploring the value of the software you’ve got is a first step. If it’s not doing it for you then, then certainly there is an opportunity to look and see what else is out there. I am not a big fan of technology for technology’s sake. Having said that, we are seeing now I think the next generation coming through that are more, most probably called digital natives, they just think, get technology in a different way and I think that will drive the next evolution.

In terms of things to watch, I mean part of it is more looking at the opportunities that are coming up or the threats in a business context and then looking at how your technology maps to that. So for instance 2014 comprehensive credit reporting is coming in, what does that mean, what does that mean for my processes, what does that mean for my software. I guess it’s a question of just seeing what’s out there in the environment, keeping an eye on it, you don’t always want to be an early adopter, maybe let someone else make your mistakes, I think the buzz word at the moment is maybe a fast follower, we look at what other people are doing, you learn from that and then you make your own decisions.